Galaxy S 4

AT&T announced the Samsung GALAXY S 4 Active yesterday and as was expected, the carrier has began accepting pre-orders today. The pre-orders are available by way of the AT&T website and the handset is priced at $199.99 on a two-year agreement. Otherwise, those looking to purchase the handset without the lengthy agreement would need to shell out $594.99.

Samsung CEO JK Shin has spoke out in regards to a recent JPMorgan report. Said report, for those who may have missed that, suggested the GALAXY S 4 was falling short of sales expectations. In addition to the comments from the report, JPMorgan also cut the share price estimates by 9.5 percent and lowered the 2013 earnings estimates by 9 percent. Following the JPMorgan report, a similar report was posted by Morgan Stanley.

AT&T did a bit of teasing yesterday afternoon and as we had been expected, the carrier has come forward with an announcement for the GALAXY S 4 Active. And in a bit of good news, this announcement included a release date and a price as well as a pre-order availability date. In short, those interested will be able to move forward with a pre-order beginning on June 14th.

Samsung announced the GALAXY S 4 Zoom earlier in the week and it seems they aren't going to waste any time in showing what the camera is capable of doing. Enter the 'Official Lifestyle Demo Video' teaser that Samsung has recently shared. This video is a little under three minutes in length and has the handset dubbed as the "only smartphone with 10x optical zoom." Or perhaps more important for those curious -- Samsung shows many of the camera specific features.

T-Mobile has recently announced some price drops. The devices are all from Samsung and include the GALAXY S 4 as well as the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II. Basically, it looks like T-Mobile has dropped the price of entry by lowering the downpayment. The one catch, these sale prices will only be available for a limited amount of time. Specifically, they will be available from June 12th through July 13th.

Samsung unveiled the GALAXY S 4 Active earlier in the month and at the time it was said the handset would be coming to the US market sometime this summer. There wasn't anything specific in terms of which carrier, however since then we have seen a rendered image leak which showed the Active with AT&T branding. AT&T has yet to offer an announcement, however it looks like that will be coming tomorrow.

This latest handset is still unannounced by Samsung, however it looks like the company is prepping another version of the GALAXY S 4. And unlike the recently unveiled GALAXY S 4 Active and Zoom, this one should have a look similar to that of the regular model. The difference here will be in the network connectivity.

Samsung has begun to rollout a new software update for the GALAXY S 4. This particular update is for the GT-I9505 which is the model sporting the Snapdragon 600 processor. The initial reports show this update as arriving for those in Germany, however Samsung is expected to roll this out in other markets. Perhaps more important, this update deals with several key issues including storage space and the smearing issue.

E-ink isn't something you often see associated with smartphones. There have been some exceptions to that rule with a few notable mentions coming in as the dual-screen YotaPhone and the popSLATE case which is only available for the iPhone 5. Well, coming by way of Gajah International it looks like those with a Galaxy Note II or GALAXY S 4 may soon have an option available for purchase.